


Harry Potter and the Art of Living

by blackholedensity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Abused Harry, Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, BAMF Harry Potter, C-PTSD, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Eventual Smut, Happy Ending, Harry Potter is Bad at Feelings, Harry Potter is a Dad, Harry Potter punches Nazis, I’m not going to lie to you chief this story gets pretty fucked up, I’m writing this to help me fight through my own symptoms/C-PTSD, Kinda, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Mental Health Issues, Mind Games, Multi, Non-Graphic but it is mentioned, PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Realistic look at the characters, Smart Harry, Substance Abuse, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Trauma, Traumatized harry, Trust Issues, Veteran Harry, ambitious Harry, lots of trauma, so everything mentioned is tackled honestly and with empathy, touch starved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:41:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26576977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackholedensity/pseuds/blackholedensity
Summary: Harry’s life blows. Seven years after the Battle of Hogwarts and the end of civilization he finds himself a single father, alone, fighting daily for his life and struggling to raise his son in a nightmare full of rage-filled monsters. He spends his days on the run - never parking the Weasley’s car for more than a day at a time - and his nights ruminating on his graveyard of mistakes. Wondering, what if?It’s then that he, despite all logic, is given a second chance. By fate or dumb luck Harry finds himself at the beginning of the end, the summer before his fifth year, as a veteran soldier. Armed with the knowledge of what’s to come Harry finally takes the offensive - and he’s not fucking it up this time, that’s for certain.There’s one thing he’s still trying to figure out, however: How the hell do you live when all you’ve ever known how to do is survive?**Tagged as Explicit for a reason. Please read the tags.**
Relationships: (past), Harry Potter/Cedric Diggory, Harry Potter/Charlie Weasley, Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger
Comments: 5
Kudos: 92





	Harry Potter and the Art of Living

Harry set the Ford Anglia down in the middle of the lifeless muggle street, the loud clang of it’s abused suspension echoing throughout the expanded inside, it’s soft blue paint chipped and scratched off it’s rusted exterior. Scavenged road signs layered to take the place of it’s shattered back windows, its back bumper and front license plate nowhere in sight.

The store across the street would have what he needed - he hoped. The intel had been half decent both thanks to and in spite of the fact that it had come from his fourth year at Hogwarts, before the end of everything. A second-year muggleborn student had mentioned her something or other owned a successful potions supply in Tombermory Scotland - and that after a modern redesign it had supposedly been recently repainted a sickeningly bright yellow and named after her. Honestly, in the line up of run of the mill albeit dilapidated shops you couldn’t miss the place blind; A pharmacy that catered to muggles and wizards alike, with an emphasis on rare potions and ingredients - run by a potions master, possibly containing the medicine he so desperately needed.

But 12 year olds are prone to hyperbole, and it was a long shot, and it was his only chance.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

“This is never going to work,” 17 year old Hermione sighed from the passenger seat without looking up from _Hogwarts: a History_ , her feet kicked up on the dashboard under the ever-growing circular ball of awful tourist keychains attached to the front mirror. 

Harry ignored her pointedly, reaching up and adjusting the mirror for a better view of the expanded backseat. The clatter of the metal keychains brushing against each other drew the attention of the child away from their drawing, melting drowsily into a pile of blankets and pillows, barefoot with legs criss-crossed. “You good, little man?” He asked kindly.

Teddy looked at him with big blue eyes echoed by dark purple bags, from a sea of scattered paper and crayons strewn all over the backseat according to some organizational system Harry had yet to understand, and did not speak. Beside him sat a novelty Triceratops plushie staring at Harry with one button eye, it’s once colourful felt dull and dirty with years of wear and tear.

“Dadoo has to go somewhere without you, so it’s up to you and Rex to stay safe here,” Harry turned around in his seat with a calm smile, anxiety curling into a heavy, electric ball in his chest at the prospect of leaving Teddy alone. Teddy looked down and thumbed the hem of the shirt he was wearing - one of Harry’s, but Harry knew it was one of the few things that comforted his son the most during dangerous times. “You guys have to colour on the floor just in case, okay? And no peeking until you hear my voice telling you it’s safe.”

Some of his fear must have treacherously made its way into his voice, because Teddy's teary eyes met Harry’s as he shook his little head, and Harry’s heart sank. He leaned in between the seats, cupping the seven year old’s face in his hand gently. “Hey,” he whispered, voice soft. “You can’t come help me this time, big guy - you’re too sick right now.” _And small._ As if to prove his point Teddy weakly placed his clammy, tiny hand on top of Harry’s, eyes closing as he let out a long string of bone chilling, hacking coughs followed by wheezing breaths. Harry immediately moved to rub his back, whispering rushed reassurances, and two stayed in that standstill of laboured breath and sputtering for so long that something Harry pushed deep down - something terrible and cold in the bottom of his stomach - began to wonder if this would be it.

Finally, Teddy’s breathing began to settle. And Harry let out his held breath between his teeth, watching with full body relief and an easy, “There, see? I told you that you were going to be okay. I’d never let anything bad happen to you,” as Teddy began to move, and Harry pulled back as his son collected his precious Rex and slowly slipped onto the floor, setting right to his drawing with all the vigor of a child who hadn’t almost just died.

Harry left him to it, turning again with a steadying breath. Stopping only to observe the now empty and silent passenger seat before he gripped the door handle. “I’ll be back soon, okay?” He promised both himself and Teddy, then turned the key to cut the engine, leaving it in the ignition as he stepped outside into the late autumn chill, all hard determination even as he was unsteady on his feet. He closed the car door - and just like that, the invisibility booster plus the powerful runes he’d added throughout the long years hid the car even from his sight, bringing a tinge of uneasy worry, although he always made a mental note of where to find it. Or maybe it was just not having Teddy in his line of sight for the first time in years that made his gut turn.

Harry turned his attention firmly to the task at hand, and despite the anxiety radiating from his bones and the smell of sour, rotting decay hitting the back of his throat like Wile-E Coyote into a drawn on tunnel, his face remained made of stone. Green eyes peered out cautiously from behind enchanted construction site safety-goggles, it’s thick band pushing down the hair over his ears, causing an odd break in his untameable lion’s mane. A basilisk tooth hung around his neck, and oversized black robes hung imbued with the strongest notice-me-not charms he could find hung loosely around his strong frame, over his muggle jeans and tshirt. Featherlight dragonhide boots stopped silently several centimetres from the pavement as he crossed the quaint street, walking as to not disturb the pools of fresh and heat-dried blood and corpses lying across the pavement no matter where your gaze fell, flesh and insides torn from their bodies.

Finally Harry reached the storefront, staring up emotionlessly at the once-white cursive sign: _Marigold’s Pharmacy,_ then smaller underneath it _all are welcome!_ Cautiously, he looked through the large, half broken-in storefront window for any sign of movement. Finding none, Harry looked around the empty street and drew in a deep breath, summoning his dagger from his inner-thigh holster into one hand, and stretching his other out into an open palm to cast a wordless and wandless spell in the direction the spot he smashed in with the handle. The rest of the glass shattered spectacularly, silently, and Harry let out his held breath and wasted no time getting out of the open and into the dark store, not letting his guard down one bit. Standing completely still as he gripped his dagger, Harry reached his free hand up and flipped the dial on his goggles, pausing to see if he saw any human or animal shaped infrared blobs before letting out soft breath, slipping his dagger back into its holster and shifting the view through his goggles back to that of his normal prescription glasses.

Harry busied himself with making his way to the back of the store, heart pounding in his chest as he tried to keep his calm facade. _So close, so close._ He slid over the pharmacy counter and into the back room containing what was left of the medicine - a fair amount, most of it expired - and almost nothing that could help Teddy. He drew out his father’s invisibility cloak from the tool-belt inside his robes, edges tied so it formed a sack, and with an open arm slid as much usable medicine as he could reasonably carry from the shelves and into the bag, a part of himself long buried cringing at the act. There may have been a time when he left some for others that might come as he had - a time when he was undeniably good - but that person was long gone, whoever he had been.

Besides, Harry had learned long ago that nobody ever would. It was just him, Teddy, and the psychotic hallucinations of the ghosts of his past now.

But the larger prize was still to come, so Harry continued desperately onwards through a solid-wall doorway that reminded him awfully of platform 93/4, and wondered if that entrance too was now barely concealed with corroding wards. _Lumos,_ Harry thought as he entered the pitch black vacuum, and in his hand appeared a brilliant white light that settled down to give him the visibility of a torch.

The thin corridor he entered into was wet and lined only with cobblestone, veering firmly off to the right. Long water-warped wooden shelves lined it, cluttered - unbelievably - with potions. So many potions Harry almost dropped to his knees and swore by, just for the briefest of moments, the existence of a benevolent god. Pulling his exhausted mind and body together, he quickly emptied his makeshift bag of any medicine not rare or important (promising himself to make multiple trips) and quietly filled it with bottle after bottle, the potions only seeming to get rarer and more valuable as he continued on down the thin corridor. He paused at one of the shelves, staring with more vulnerability than he’d allowed himself in some time upon what he’d come for - his saving grace. Teddy’s saving grace. The coveted Lung Clearing Potion. Carefully, he took each and every bottle from the shelf - enough to last years, maybe - and placed it in the heavy cloak, with a single bottle tucked away inside his robes for good measure, continuing on greedily to the ingredients. It was then that he saw it, the light at the end of the corridor - and heard it muttering. 

Harry had to know. It was almost like being in a trance, utterly hypnotized, the light calling him from the inside out. It was then that he looked down and found his feet moving without his input and a vague panic settled over him, but soon the feeling was replaced by a calm not unlike a warm blanket. So on he kept, as the corridor got more and more well lit, until he came upon the end.

The mouth of the corridor opened into a large, carved out room, filled wall to wall with ingredients. In the centre was a large, boiling cauldron over an open fire, a skin and bones old man hunched over it. He stirred manically with bloody raw hands, the skin covered in blisters and black-charred, muttering. “Stir the potion, gotta stir the potion, have to... make some new potions...” he rambled, voice hoarse, “new potions - business is booming! Stir it - carefully now Burton, counterclockwise...”

Harry’s eyes darted to the floor, covered in odds and ends and - to his undying horror - the broken remains of empty time turners. He took in a sharp breath he couldn’t help, and with a shocked hand over his mouth looked up - and, terribly, locked eyes with the potions master - who had stopped rambling.

Harry only had half a second of stunned silence, invisibility cloak still thrown over his back, to notice that the old man wasn’t old at all - but rather no older than forty, though his grey hair and pale skin drug down over a haggard face aged him exponentially. Then there was another half a second's time to realize that wasn’t the case either as the man de-aged about ten years, then sped right back up to his mid 70s, then back down to a young adult, in bright migraine-inducing flashes. Then, one more horrible second as the man raised his black, immobile hands out of the liquid and flung himself at Harry.

The man flew over the cauldron, tackling Harry to the ground, the back of his head smashing against the ground and burning black spots in his vision like corroding film. Still in a dazed stupor, the potions master raked his fingers into Harry’s filthy hair, gripping it hard in his fist and pulling it up to reveal his scar. Then, with no recognition and a too-wide grin, the man shoved his mangled fist into Harry’s mouth - tearing it a little at one corner - and down his throat, choking the life out of him as mangled pieces of flesh flaked away and disintegrated with a taste like licking used firewood, revealing only a sharp tang of blood behind. Harry bit down with a horrific scream from the potions master, and regretted it immediately as the meat pulled away from the man’s bones like well cooked ribs when the man tore backwards to reveal a hand half-bone.

Harry spit the flesh onto the floor beside him, taking deep, dry-heaving breaths as he pressed a fist against the man’s middle and jerked his arm in a twist, loading an arrow into his forearm crossbow and squeezing his fist to fire, driving an arrow deep into the potion master’s chest. And as the man spat up blood onto Harry’s face, Harry’s taped-together wand shot from the holster on the other side of his forearm and into Harry’s grip, pointed below the arrow at the potions master’s stomach.

 _“Everte Stantum!”_ Harry shouted hoarsely, and backwards the man flew, knocking over the cauldron filled with the boiling mixture as he went and hitting the wall with a screaming crunch, the shelves full of ingredients crashing to the ground. The arrow wretched itself from the man’s body to arm his crossbow. Then, promptly, Harry summoned rolled off of his dad's now torn-to-shreds invisibility cloak and the mountain of shattered bottles tearing through it into his back, tattering his robes in the process, and vomited a mixture of blood and half-digested canned food. Then, he shielded his face as the boiling mixture washed over his legs, soaking into his clothes And burning him.

Harry tore though his hands pulling his invisibility cloak from the ground broken glass and all, tying it into the smallest ball he could and shoving it into his tool-belt. Then, standing unevenly with blurry hands gripping the wall for support, the room spinning around him, Harry knew all at once he wouldn’t be able to stay conscious for long. So he set to it. Stumbling through the mouth of the suffocating corridor that seemed to stretch for miles, everything in him immediately wanted to pull himself back to that terrible room - a compulsion charm, he thought bitterly, and took all the willpower left in him not to turn back. From there his torn hands scrabbled along the stone walls in an attempt to steady himself as he moved forward, still retching and vomiting as he staggered into the black. Time blurred as he tried to conjure up the memory of a spell to produce light, and found that he couldn’t remember much at all, and that he was very tired.

When he heard the bloodthirsty gurgling screams behind him and the drag of heavy feet, Harry remembered something important however: that he was very much going to die in here. He ran like a mad man anyway, tearing down shelves and clattering leftover bottles to the ground behind him as he stumbled through his own coffin, unsure even if he was going the right way, screaming himself hoarse for hours or days. The cobblestone seemed to vibrate and flex as he ran like the esophagus of a hideous beast swallowing him whole, until he finally reached a dead end as the terrible gurgling got louder and louder behind him, banging his bloody, delirious fists off of the wall.

Then, as the terrible creature behind him became deafening Harry’s foot kicked over a rattling pile, and in a stroke of brilliance or pure dumb luck Harry threw himself hard to the left and fell hard on his back with the sound of breaking glass into the white tiled floor, the room blinding and open as he scrambled to get up and keep going, a stumbling sprint as the rooms span and span like he was crashing down to earth. Was he flying? He thought, trying desperately to remember as he tore his way through the store and out the broken front window, and stopped short when he remembered that he didn’t know where he was going, still shouting and crying in a daze.

Then the people came - and Harry remembered that was bad news - out of homes and shops, bloody and thin, screeching furiously and gurgling. Flooding the streets already filled with bodies and coming after him in a full sprint, stopping only to tear whoever they met on the way limb from limb. Where is it? He thought, not even knowing what _it_ was. The people came ever closer, tearing themselves apart, thinning their herd but not nearly enough. 

_It’s over,_ he thought peacefully.

Then he thought, _Teddy_ , and impossibly knew.

Throwing himself through the crowd and into the road as their jagged nails tore at the ribbons of his robes, he grabbed blindly in the street until his shaking fingers gripped the metal of a door handle. His hands fumbled and flailed around it, the fear gripping deep in his chest as the cold hands of the faceless crowd tore the bottom half of his cloak right off of his body. Then he was being slammed against the car door by a bandaged wrist, his goggles digging into the skin of his cheek and parting it like a butterknife, and with the adrenaline still pumping through his veins threw his elbow back in a strike that put whoever had had their hands on his shoulders on the ground with a thud. He jumped back, brushing against somebody’s chest as they ran full force into his back, tearing long scratches down his neck as they tried to get a grip only to be sent spinning when Harry threw his head back hard into their nose - ears ringing from the second blow to the same spot. Then, in the few minutes of time he’d bought himself, he gripped the door handle hard - tearing it open and hauling himself into the back seat.

There was a scream from the floor, followed by uncontrollable sobbing as Harry, still dizzy and half lucid, turned himself around to pull the door closed as fast as he could. Not fast enough, however - and with only a foot left of space to go Harry watched in horror as a bony arm hooked its way around the car door, scratching at the leather upholstery with it’s remaining fingers as the creature tried to pry it open. Harry maintained his grip on the latch as the thing tore the door open enough to slide Harry forward across the backseat on his ass, with barely enough time to kick both legs up on either side of the doorway to keep himself from flying out and the door from slamming open wide. The creature, however - an old woman no younger than sixty - had gained itself just enough space to force it’s shoulder and head into the car, and began forcing the door open with twice the leverage.

Harry used his legs to push himself backward while still gripping the handle, hands sliding sweaty against the metal and he pulled against the bloodthirsty animal. The screams of his son behind him got louder as the shrieking creatures outside slammed their bodies against the car like moths into a glass lantern, and the old woman gave one last hard pull, Harry’s slippery fingertips all that was left of his grip on the handle, heartbeat in his throat. The car door flew forward, opening wide enough to reveal the carnage and gore of the creatures waiting outside. Harry tumbled along with it, the handle still in his grip as he un-braised one foot from beside the door and slammed it, boot and all, into the old lady’s snarling face - sending her backwards limp, with the crunch of bone and a splatter of blood as he slammed the door shut behind her with a thud.

Harry turned, vomiting bile on the floor as a wave of nausea and dizziness washed through him, his sight a spotty blur as he raked over the empty backseat, the car shaking with every thud of a body thrown against it. Then, after the longest ten seconds of his life, he caught sight of Teddy - in the struggle the boy had pulled himself into the front seat, still sobbing as he tried to turn the key in the ignition despite being unable to see over the dashboard. Harry was there in an instant, laying haphazardly between the two seats, one arm embracing a terrified Teddy. The crying child immediately let go of the key and turned into Harry’s chest, weaving the fabric of his t-shirt through his tiny fingers and clutching hard while Harry ran his fingers shakily through his hair, whispering half-remembered reassurances as he used his other hand to fumble jerkily for the key in the ignition. He gripped it like a lifeline and, finally, turned it - only to be met with the rumbling sound of a dead engine.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” He muttered, turning it again as he pulled himself unsteadily into the frontseat, Teddy on his lap. Once again a mechanical purr reverberated throughout the car. “No, you can’t give up on me now,” he turned the key, “Not now, please, for god’s sake, _please-_ ”

The next stall of the engine was punctuated by smoke pouring out from under the hood and a shrieking crack as one of the creatures threw itself into the side window, now split into a spiderweb. Harry barely had the time to throw himself and Teddy into the backseat as it’s arm - mangled, embedded with glass and dripping fresh blood - shouldered it’s way through the window to grip at their throats with a razor-sharp hand.

From there it began the process of tearing it’s entire upper body through the broken window, muscles coming apart on the remaining glass as it desperately tried to force its way through, even as other creatures tried to pull it back out into the street, bloodthirsty with rage. Harry made for the thick, vomit-covered blanket discarded on the floor as a hail mary, even as the other window cracked and shattered under the weight of another body, limbs on top of limbs tearing at anything within reach as they fought their way closer and closer to their prey. Harry, Teddy tucked against his waist, secured one side of the blanket to the driver's seat as the creatures began rolling over the smoking hood to slam their dead-weight against the windshield, which was slowly but surely erupting into a mosaic by the time Harry tied the other end of the blanket to the passenger seat. A crude barricade - but it would give them at least a few minutes.

This was it. The end. Harry felt it in his entire body - a feeling he’d never felt, even all those times he risked his life fighting Voldemort. The power of his adrenaline ran through his veins, tingling under his skin and making his hair stand on end - but the terror was absolute, his horror at what would have to be done. There was no other action to be taken. No fight or flight. Just his sobbing son, clinging to his waist and staring up at him with those big, expectant eyes of his, waiting for Harry to save them both.

It made Harry sick to his stomach with guilt, throat tightening with a devastating loss of a magnitude he couldn’t even begin to imagine yet. Like a man standing at a beach, looking on at a tsunami.

“Teddy,” Harry said, and his voice shook with the weight, “I love you so, so much.” 

One of the layered signs fell into the car with the scraping of metal, and the shrieking things began fighting their way through the window and into the backseat. He choked down his fear and paid them no mind, turning Teddy’s gaze from the scene to meet his eyes. “I won’t let them hurt you, okay?” Harry promised, voice gentle and kind. “So don’t listen to them, listen to me.”

A loud crash from behind them, followed by a thud as one of them finally threw themselves in through the windshield. Then more, flying in and landing on top of each other as they began to tear apart whoever their eyes caught first. Teddy’s eyes remained solely on Harry’s.

“You are… the best thing I ever did.” Harry hugged Teddy to his chest tight, reaching down and pulling his knife slowly from his holster. “You’re my pride and joy, little buddy. My angel. You are so good, and smart, and curious, and brave-” 

The creatures began to tear at the blanket in rage, picking up handfuls of glass and raking the shards across the fabric as a means of getting through. “I am so, so sorry Teddy. You deserved so much better than me,” Harry confessed, tears flowing freely down his face now as he raised the knife, the blade inches from the side of Teddy’s skull as the creatures grew nearer and nearer. “If I could go back and fix it all for you, right now, I would. I promise you.” He looked down at the mess brown hair held against his chest, closing his eyes tight as the blanket came away, gripping the knife with white knuckles. _“I’d do anything._ ”

There was a moment of silence as the screaming stopped dead - drowned to a stillness - and in the dark of Harry’s closed eyes, he thought he may have been dead too. He opened his eyes expecting to see the bright light of Kingscross Station, but only found the knife still held aloft in his hand as Teddy breathed softly against his chest. He sobbed in relief, holding the boy close. Then he leant across the seats, over the crashed in road signs, their metal dented and torn, and looked dazed out of the open window - still wondering if this was some sort of afterlife - and found nothing but a desolate, empty street. His gaze drifted slowly to the road beneath the car, mouth falling open.

A cracked open ravine brighter at the bottom than the surface, the walls filled with dancing colours.

Then, the car fell.

Light danced across Harry’s face in dizzying flashes as the car tilted backward hard, sending him flying backwards in between the two seats, towards the smashed in windshield. He let go of the knife and instinctively wrapped his arms around his son, then stopped short as his foot caught in the remains of the blanket-barricade, his knife lost somewhere above them in the bright abyss.

 _This must have been what Sirius felt like._ Was the first thought that escaped his stupid lizard brain.

“Teddy!” He yelled into the odd silence, no whistling of wind in his ears even as the force of the car dragged them down through empty space.

Teddy’s tiny hand pinched his side, a simple movement to let his dad know he was okay.

“Oh thank Christ - hold on to me and don’t let go!” Harry instructed, waiting for Teddy’s arms and legs to wrap around him before hooking the heel of the foot not caught in the blanket against the steering wheel, using it to heave himself forward and down into the car with all of his strength and grab hold of the seatbelt with one hand, the feel of its thick plastic-y fabric digging into the inside of his fist. 

Just then the blanket gave way and Harry’s foot slipped against its place on the steering wheel as they were thrown up and out into the sky, Harry’s legs dangling through the windshield, it’s remains scraping into his calves as he squeezed the seatbelt hard - his only anchor as he and Teddy were ripped down through space. Teddy‘s fingernails tore into the back of his neck with the effort to hold on,choking on a sob. “Come on,” Harry gritted through his teeth, dangling weakly as the car pulled him down, his elbow suddenly pulled taut and straining. His legs pulled forward against the wind resistance with great strength, scrambling for purchase against the slick metal of the blue exterior.

“Dadoo?” Came a soft voice, crackling and small against his collarbone. Harry's eyes snapped down to his son, bracing his arm tighter around him.

“Teddy?” He asked, as if it could be anyone else.

A terrified sob wracked the boy in his arms, and Harry realized then that he couldn’t feel his legs wrapped around his back anymore.

_Not again. I just almost lost him - I can’t do this again._

His hand slacked on the seatbelt, and he gripped it hard again with a lurch. “You’re going to be okay,” he said, trying to keep the terror out of his voice as the strain in his arm holding the seatbelt grew more painful by the second. “Can you get your legs up and around me again?”

Teddy shook his head, sobbing again. Harry’s blood ran cold.

“You’ve got to try. Can you try?”

Teddy buried his head further into Harry’s chest as he cried. It was then that Harry’s hand sank loosely into Teddy’s back, his hand filling with grit, and Harry stared horrified at the golden trail leading up from his son’s body - almost lost in the ever shifting colours.

Time sand.

“No,” Harry reasoned, struck dumb, “how is this... This can’t be happening!” The time sand escaped from Teddy’s upper body through Harry’s fingers, his legs already gone, behind them and away. “Teddy!” He screamed, and all too fast the boy dissolved completely against his chest, flying up into the shifting sky as Harry tried in vain to catch handfuls of sand with his now free hand, tears fogging up his goggles.

Harry shouted something strangled and dying and unintelligible, reaching up to the cloud of sand as more and more distance was put in between them, until there wasn’t a fleck of gold in sight. “Fuck!” He sobbed, swinging his now empty arm towards the seatbelt and grabbing hold.

The rest of the fight inside the car passed in a blur of flashes as Harry screamed himself hoarse, not even sure what force was moving his body as his shaking, numb hands pulled him forward enough through a line of broken glass for his feet to find a hold against the dashboard. They traced the seatbelt up to its root and gripped the front seats, then hurled him between them and around one corner, into the backseat. His torn up legs braced against the back of the passenger seat and pushed him backwards with one final heave, just far enough for his ass to hit the seat behind him. Then his weak arm reached up - elbow screaming - for the seatbelt, and snapped it into place at his hip as a cold pit took the place of Harry’s stomach, bile rising in his throat. “Fuck,” he whispered, hands still gripping the seatbelt for dear life even as it locked into place and pinned him securely against the backseat.

The bright lights danced against the interior of the car as he fell further into hell, staring up through the windshield at the son he’d left behind in a dream-like daze and hating the last bitter seconds of his life.

 _No,_ _this_ _is what Sirius felt like._ His mind supplied as the lights finally started to go faster and faster, growing dimmer as he hurled down. Harry closed his eyes hard against the thought.

And with that there was darkness, and a screaming crash as the back end of the car hit a dead end.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I’m back from what turned out to be... a really long hiatus lmao. But as it turns out I really enjoy writing fan fiction, and I was going through the Harry Potter Time Travel Fix-It tag to look for something like this and couldn’t find anything so I figured: why not write it?
> 
> Anyway. This chapter was big time angst, but I promise there’s some comedic relief in the next one lol. Any comments or kudos left are greatly appreciated:) I’m just glad to see other people are reading/enjoying my work.


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